Outside the village...

[jay]

I'm frankly envious of parents with community support... for example, dawnd and akienm are able to find a series of sitters for Allegra so that they could go to a weekend workshop in LA. Without having to, say, fly in Dawn's mother from back East... it's great for them, and I think they'll add a lot to that workshop. But I know that I couldn't do the same thing, and that Pat and I are pretty much on our own as far as child-raising goes... no net, here. When crises have hit, my only option has been to fly in one or the other grandmothers for a while, and/or take vacation time and stay home as well.

Still, that's a natural consequence of not being a part of any particular community, other than sort of tolerated on the fringes... I have only myself to reproach, arguably, for not giving enough or conforming sufficiently.

Comments

[tenacious-snail.livejournal.com]

I suggested this to him elsewhere, but I think that one of the challenges here is that you're not an extrovert, so the idea of an event requiring that you make phone calls in order to arrange a sitter, and then go out and be social with other people is stretching you to do *two* things that you don't like. One might be tolerable, or something you're willing to do because Brian likes it, but two might be too much.

When the time is right, I've got several alternatives to offer in the hopes that one might be a workable solution.